Publishers of online content have found it increasingly important to not only direct users to the content they publish, but also to increase user engagement with the content published. For example, a publisher does not simply want a user to read an article (content) on its website it wants the user to share, e-mail, bookmark, blog about, indicate approval of and otherwise further engage with the article.
Since visual real-estate is finite on a user's display it is desirable to determine what to display to a user and how to display it in order to maximize that user's engagement. Content that is published online is often associated with an annotation. The annotation indicates the popularity of the content, for example, the annotation shows a user how many times consumers of the content indicated a preference for, interest in, approved of or endorsed the content. Current systems will display content to a user based on the content's popularity as measured by the annotation. However, such systems do not account for differences in the user's sharing activity, e.g., how often the user indicates approval; posts, reposts or embeds content on a blog or micro blog; and sends, or forwards, content via e-mail or other digital message system, when displaying content. For example, assume the same article will be displayed in the same manner to both User A, who frequently shares content he/she views, and User B, who typically only views content without further interaction or sharing. Consequently, such a system fails to optimize the display of content items based at least in part on the user's online activity. For example, current systems fail to recognize that based on User A's sharing activities, User A's levels of engagement may be relatively unaffected by annotations, i.e., User A is not more likely to share, e-mail, bookmark, blog about, indicate approval of and otherwise further engage with content associated with a favorable annotation. Therefore, the display real-estate occupied by the annotation is not going to its highest use, and the service provider would be better off displaying something else to User A to increase user engagement or displaying an advertisement to generate greater ad revenue. However, based on User B's sharing activities, User B's engagement level may be affected by annotations, i.e., User B is more likely to engage with content associated with a favorable annotation; therefore, displaying favorable annotations to User B is advantageous.
Since current systems fail to distinguish between Users A & B, the current systems also do not customize the display of annotations based on the differences in sharing activity between the two users. For example, the current systems do not display the annotation more prominently to User B, who may be more affected by annotations, and less prominently (if at all) to User A, who may be less affected by the annotation. Moreover, current systems do not customize the content displayed to Users A & B or the order of its display. For example, the content with the most favorable annotation is not displayed to User B, and content based at least in part on criteria other than the favorability of the annotation (or a different type of annotation) is not displayed to User A. The failure of the current systems to customize the display of content items and/or annotations based at least in part on the user's sharing activity undermines the goal of content providers to maximize user engagement.